It's miracle enough that Watchmen even got made in the first place, having been
stuck in development hell for the last two decades. Perhaps it would take an even
greater miracle for it to put its many disparate pieces together to form something as
epic as the scope of its ambitions.

The cluster of influences, histories, stylistic devices and the worldviews of its
numerous heroic and/or anti-heroic characters within Watchmen never coalesce
into a fully convincing whole. Now, now, I understand - disorder is precisely the
point. But that doesn't mean there's not a bigger picture here; it just so happens
that director Zack Snyder loses it from time to time. (Whether or not previous
would-be helmers Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky or Paul Greengrass could have
accomplished it is another matter, but I sure would like to see them try.)

Chaos is the only prevailing certainty in this
dystopian alternate history; impending nuclear doom is the punchline. And still,
Snyder doesn't always seem aware that Watchmen is, ultimately, a black comedy.
In the moments he does realize this, the film soars; when he doesn't, it digresses
into a shapeless vacuum of characters whose lives appear to serve no purpose but
to reminisce about the old days or solve mysteries that have merely a vague
connection to a world we can only hear in the background.

Many of the triumphs in Watchmen are evidence of Snyder's improvement as a
filmmaker. This is vastly more sophisticated than the monotonous drone of 300,
his last feature. He has scaled back the furious slo-mo he used so gratuitously in
that film and employed a far more versatile cinematic vocabulary.

He finds the wit in the interplay between the action in a television commercial and
the action just behind that door that's about to be kicked down. The subtle menace
of a swinging bathroom door, offering us a tantalizing build-up of an inevitable act
of violence. Or cutting away from the action to reveal the result, or the reaction.

The way the film communicates action and anticipation, juxtaposes pop imagery
and comic melodrama, is done to great effect in scene after scene. At the same
time, however, Snyder still shows he has a long way to go as a dramatist.

He opens with one of the film's best scenes, as
the aging vigilante known as The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is attacked and
thrown out the window to his death by an unknown assailant. Humor and stark
matter-of-factness play beautifully in this scene, seemingly establishing the film's
tone. We transition into a superb title sequence that gets back story out of the way
through a series of detailed tableaus.

Then, we meet Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), the most fascinating character in
the film, a sociopath with a stringently black-and-white view of good and evil,
appropriate enough given the mask - or his "face," as he insists - with its ink-blot
shapes constantly shifting as he breaths, speaks, feels, seethes. He is our eyes and
ears, a sociopathic outlaw intent on bringing to light whatever conspiracy has
suddenly found "costumed heroes" - once a fad, now illegal - being killed one by
one.

Once we get these exceptional opening scenes out of the way, however, things get
a bit murky. Snyder seems to lose grasp of exactly what we're supposed to be
experiencing. The elements that come alive so feverishly early on suddenly
dissipate in favor of a succession of plot points, flashbacks, fights and romantic
overtures that are either given far too little screen time or far too much. There's so
much padding piled on top of itself that the film loses sight of the world outside;
we forget what's at stake; we don't feel the paranoia, the fearful collective
unconscious, that has become so congenital to this society.

This is a 1985 America in which Richard Nixon
is in his fifth term as president, with the Cold War building toward a climax. Years
ago, a depraved American ideal had paved the way for the inexplicable emergence
of "masked adventurers" - everyday people who play dress-up and fight crime for
the greater good. Or if not the greater good, then at least for money. To each his
own.

Those adventurers have been outlawed by now, and as they begrudgingly accept
forced retirement, even they can't explain exactly why they did it. The only true
"superhero" among them is the deliberately ominously named Dr. Manhattan
(Billy Crudup), who was disintegrated in a nuclear reactor and re-constructed as a
glowing, bright blue super being. Dr. Manhattan - and his big blue penis - can
sees his past, present and future at once, change and rearrange matter and teleport
from place to place.

Seen as a god by most of mankind ("God exists, and he is American!"), he is used
by the government as a weapon (ending Vietnam by himself) and presumably as a
deterrent against any nuclear strike by the government . . . only to instead provoke
extreme fear - the kind of fear that might cause one to irrationally strike first. He
was once a watchman, a short-lived organized group of superheroes that included -
among those not already mentioned - Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), following
in her mother's footsteps; Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson); and Ozymandias (Matthew
Goode), the so-called smartest man on earth.

The most sensible character of all, of course, is
The Comedian, for he sees the state of the world as humanity's grand joke on
itself. He is both the epitome of this world and its ironic counterpoint. The
problem is, Snyder doesn't always seem to get the joke.

He also runs into obstacles of tone that the film isn't able to overcome. Some of it
stems from the dialogue, directly translated from the comic page but delivered with
only intermittent success. Akerman, as much as she looks the part (and boy does
she look it), is embarrassingly bad, and Wilson and Carla Gugino aren't especially
good, either. Haley gives the film's standout performance.

There are so many flashes of excellence that it makes the film's shortcomings all
the more disappointing. Alex McDowell's production design create a fittingly
moody, noirish look and feel to the settings. Direct compositions and visual ideas
are lifted from the war room in Kubrick's timeless "Dr. Strangelove" - and there's
even a reference to that film's dramatic doppelganger, "Fail-Safe." And Snyder
winks through the soundtrack with the likes of "All Along the Watchtower," "The
Sound of Silence," "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and Leonard Cohen's
"Hallelujah."

Based on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons'
seminal and stunning graphic novel, Watchmen comes after two decades' worth of
false starts. No doubt the ambition in translating the book to a full-blooded
cinematic experience was a tall order. That said, the final results are mixed.

Watchmen is an easy nut to track, but a difficult one to judge or review. This is
one of those cases when the star-rating system seems superfluous. Ultimately, the
film suffers from flawed construction that robs it of its very essence, particularly
during the middle acts. Snyder loses track of the bigger picture, and as a result, so
do we. That being said, Watchmen is so much more effective than I dreaded given
Snyder's previous works, that it remains a triumph of sorts - but only in pieces.